What are they sending to the NSA?
Corpus of network communications automatically sent to Apple by Yosemite
51–60 of 109 posts
Re: Corpus of network communications automatically sent to Apple by Yosemite
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
My concern was that if I wanted to buy something, I'd go online and look for it. If I wanted to run an application, I'd search for it. It was a case of extremely terrible UX and wasted my time having to disable it each time I installed Ubuntu.
'apt-get remove unity-shopping-lens' hardly consumes a lot of time, particularly since you make it sound like you installed Ubuntu often enough to make it onerous - that often, and you'd remember the command without having to web-search for it.
Uninstalling bloatware also "hardly" consumes a lot of time.
It's a step which no-one should have to take.
Re: Corpus of network communications automatically sent to Apple by Yosemite
#53I am extremely disturbed by this report. I have been a faithful Apple user for years, but this single report causes me to seriously consider switching to Linux for good.
You mean to get something like Ubuntu that does the same thing?
Let's set this straight: anything that gives you suggestions (for search, products, dictionary definitions, songs, etc) from the internet, is by definition sending your query to some internet server.
Next drama: Google searches send my search queries to Google.
Re: Corpus of network communications automatically sent to Apple by Yosemite
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
They weren't advertisements. They were product search results. And the concern wasn't about the fact that it shows products, but about the fact that data was being sent to Amazon (unencrypted as well, I believe).
" They weren't advertisements. They were product search results." That line is blurred these days.
But it wasn't in the shopping lens.
It was a bad idea. But let's not throw random general statements in a concrete discussion.
Did you ever get a result from the shopping lens which could be mistaken for an advertisement rather than a product result you can buy on Amazon?
Re: Corpus of network communications automatically sent to Apple by Yosemite
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
'apt-get remove unity-shopping-lens' hardly consumes a lot of time, particularly since you make it sound like you installed Ubuntu often enough to make it onerous - that often, and you'd remember the command without having to web-search for it.
Uninstalling bloatware also "hardly" consumes a lot of time. It's a step which no-one should have to take.
You use scare quotes, suggesting you think it takes a long time. It really doesn't, not for anyone who has frequently installed ubuntu - it really is as fast as typing that line.
Also, where did I say it was a good thing? I also think that having to deselect privacy markers in two places is also a step no-one should have to take. This thread is about why Ubuntu got raked over the coals and Apple didn't, and it takes longer to navigate to and unselect the two disparate options for the Apple search issue than to uninstall the Ubuntu thing.
I mean seriously, of all the arguments against the Unity shopping lens, "I install ubuntu a lot and this wastes so much of my time" is such a non-starter. It takes more time to select a wallpaper.
Re: Corpus of network communications automatically sent to Apple by Yosemite
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
'apt-get remove unity-shopping-lens' hardly consumes a lot of time, particularly since you make it sound like you installed Ubuntu often enough to make it onerous - that often, and you'd remember the command without having to web-search for it.
Uninstalling bloatware also "hardly" consumes a lot of time. It's a step which no-one should have to take.
I find much harder to justify Apple (as an Apple user) then Ubuntu for doing this.
Ubuntu is free (technically also Yosemite is, but it´s part of the Apple HW/SW package), and what it does it´s not so different than a Laptop manufacturer installing bloatware to subsidize the costs. It´s ugly but I understand it.
But one of the reason for buying an Apple product (and paying a premium price for it), it is not having to deal with things like this.
Re: Corpus of network communications automatically sent to Apple by Yosemite
#57I'm very glad for that thread. I didn't know that I also needed to uncheck "Include Spotlight Suggestions" in Safari additionally to Preferences. I do not understand why there's such a backlash against anyone that points out that: 1. It's not intuitive to have to both disable "Include Spotlight Suggestions" in Safari and in Preferences. 2. People like my father who are privacy conscious but are average computer users…
>This makes me feel that the new focus on privacy from Apple is more for PR purpose than something they really care for.
Clearly they are doing it for their own purposes, and your post is fair comment, but if their interests and their customer's interests align then that's good for both sides.
It's also possible that while their current privacy oriented features leave gaps that are exploitable, that's just because the remaining gaps are trickier to address and will just take longer. Also just because elements of the communications infrastructure they don't control may be open, that doesn't mean they should therefore leave the elements of it they do control open as well. It certainly doesn't mean that them locking down those elemts is somehow necessarily a cynical move. That's not the sort of attitude I think we should be taking as it explicitly penalises and discourages individuals and companies from even trying to improve things.
Re: Corpus of network communications automatically sent to Apple by Yosemite
#58I'm very glad for that thread. I didn't know that I also needed to uncheck "Include Spotlight Suggestions" in Safari additionally to Preferences. I do not understand why there's such a backlash against anyone that points out that: 1. It's not intuitive to have to both disable "Include Spotlight Suggestions" in Safari and in Preferences. 2. People like my father who are privacy conscious but are average computer users…
>This makes me feel that the new focus on privacy from Apple is more for PR purpose than something they really care for. Clearly they are doing it for their own purposes, and your post is fair comment, but if their interests and their customer's interests align then that's good for both sides. It's also possible that while their current privacy oriented features leave gaps that are exploitable, that's just because th…
I agree with you but in the case of the MAC address randomization, the fact that they don't work according to reports when location services or cellular data is turned on seems more like a bug due to insufficient QA. I really can't see any technical reasons why MAC address randomization would be disabled if location services or cellular data is enabled.
I'm happy that they try to talk about privacy but for now I give them some flak because they're advertising this feature which actually never works for normal users (who turns off their cellular data before closing their phone?).
For my points #1 and #2, I think it's mostly an oversight in term of UI design but again Apple is well known for it's attention to details in UI design and this feels half baked like if they didn't spend time thinking about privacy implications and the way users actually behave. My disappointment is because I expected better from Apple, they usually are very good at clear UI design and thinking through things like this.
I hope I'm proven wrong and that Apple really delivers on its promises when it comes to privacy but right now, there's still some way to go beyond the speeches and ads that have been made.
Re: Corpus of network communications automatically sent to Apple by Yosemite
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Uninstalling bloatware also "hardly" consumes a lot of time. It's a step which no-one should have to take.
You use scare quotes, suggesting you think it takes a long time. It really doesn't, not for anyone who has frequently installed ubuntu - it really is as fast as typing that line. Also, where did I say it was a good thing? I also think that having to deselect privacy markers in two places is also a step no-one should have to take. This thread is about why Ubuntu got raked over the coals and Apple didn't, and it takes…
Are you so completely blind to other people's computer skills?
It only takes a short amount of time for you because you know precisely what to do. There are literally millions of little "but that's so easy to change" on a computer, it's a huge cognitive tax.
Other people will be "Why's there shopping results, wtf? How'd I get rid of this. What's going on?". After a few weeks of it annoying them they finally google it , find old information, run an old command, doesn't work, get annoyed, go make cup of tea in annoyance. Forget about it. Get even more annoyed over the next few weeks at Amazon results popping up, google again, finally find up-to-date blog post, find the right menu, go to the right place, click, finished. Until they install the next version in a year or two and the process happens all over again as they've forgotten how they did it last time.
EDIT: There's a great little idea in the book Good Omens where the devil Crowley sets up projects of small amounts of misery to huge amounts of humans, rather than going after one soul at a time like other, old fashioned, demons. Auto-callers, motorways shaped like an ancient symbol for the devil (the M25).
Crapware like this would definitely be something Crowley would be proud to come up with.
Re: Corpus of network communications automatically sent to Apple by Yosemite
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
> you can't have that and not share your searches with Apple Why on earth not? Why can't the search box just talk to DDG?
Isn't what people are getting hot and bothered about is that " local " searches are sending data out on the internet, rather than where they happen to be sending it?
One of the problems is that you can set your search provider as DDG, and the query still goes to Apple too. GP posits that this is an essential part of doing a web search.